Thursday, September 23, 2010

More about analagous color schemes

Here is the color wheel again. I was asked by a reader what pigments I used to make it. I set out to make it using only Cadmium yellow, permanent red and cobalt blue. I discovered though that I needed to use a little cobalt violet to get the violet to show and I used a little quinacridone over in the red-violet, I also fed a little cadmium orange into the orange note. I think if I had used quinacridone red or permanent alizarin all the way through it would probably have worked better. But I wanted the colors to be real clear and distinct in order to clearly illustrate my points.

Here is a analogous color scheme plus a complement. This is a very common color scheme. We have all seen the lady in the red hat dropped into a green landscape. The eye is very pleased to find a little bit of the complementary color in a picture based on an analogous scheme. If you look at the color wheel at the top you can pick out several more of these. The greens against red is only one of the possible variations on this.

The analogous plus a complement is a real workhorse combination and is a sure fire way to get a simple, pleasing color scheme in a painting.

Above is a corner of a color scheme that I want to tell you about. This is really a strange thing. We usually are told that primaries are not mixable, they just ARE. But if you mix together the colors on either side of a primary, you get the primary. It is somewhat grayed, but there it is, just the same. In other words if you mix the two colors flanking the yellow note, you will get yellow. Weird, huh?

Here is another variation. Rather than each of the three hues being identical and evenly balanced with each other, two of them are subordinated . The yellow is the dominant and the two flanking colors are reduced in chroma. This gives artistic inequality. With one the dominant and the other two subordinate a more artful effect is gained.

You just blew my mind with this one. A great set of posts Mr. Kearns. I agree with Lucy that this could be very useful for the fall, though this year the color of fall seems to be mostly dried out, dead brown.

I think I can explain how colors adjacent to a primary could mix to give a dulled form of the primary. Realize that the colors we see reflected from pigments are not pure in the sense of having a single wavelength or narrow band of wavelengths. That can only be achieved with a light source, using things like prisms, gratings, or lasers. A cheap laser pointer, for example, gives red light that is virtually all at a wavelength near 670 nm. Each color we see from any pigment has a reflectance spectrum composed of a broad continuum of wavelengths with varying intensities. Taking Stape’s example, the yellow-orange has a red component in its reflectance spectrum, and the yellow-green has a blue component. When mixed, their common yellow component is preserved, but the red and blue components make a purple, the complement of yellow. Because the mix has the complement of yellow, the resulting yellow is grayed. Incidentally, I use the word purple here, rather than violet, because purple is not a pure monochromatic color, but rather the presence of the two colors red and blue. These have wavelengths from the opposite sides of the visible spectrum. Violet, by contrast, is neither blue nor red, but a color in its own right. It lies at the extreme end of the visible spectrum, beyond blue and indigo, with the shortest wavelengths (highest frequency and energy). There is no pigment I know of that reflects anything like a pure violet. At shorter wavelengths, the light is ultraviolet and invisible to human eyes. None of this, I realize, will keep artists from using the words purple and violet interchangeably.

Good post Stape. No offense meant Bob but I think the best explanation for this is done with a palette knife. There really is no substitute for charting color. I make my violets with veridian and a violet leaning red, often my blues too, wonderful overcast skies. That's what Bob is talking about but seeing it is much more powerful than talking about it. I think that on we can get caught up in the theory of light and color and loose the subtlety that is best discovered with a palette knife and an open mind.

About Me

I am a professional landscape painter.I make my living painting pictures.
In my blog I show my paintings, offer some of the techniques, ideas and methods I have learned over the years, and talk about how to make a living as an artist. I present some essays on painting, art, and hopefully amuse you some at the same time. I will also tell you about many of the fine painters I have known over the years and some who died long ago. I talk about my training in the studios of R.H.Ives Gammell and about the many artists who have mentored me along the way. I also try to explain what I THINK makes a good painting, and how to go about making one.
If you have just found this blog, I suggest you go back to the earliest posts and read forward. It is now an enormous archive of about a thousand posts. The posts start out with the most basic information and progress towards the more philosophical side of painting. I hope you will find it useful!
.............Stape

Teaching

I do teach and I do travel. If you are interested in booking workshops or having me visit and teach at your institution, school or art association please email me at stapletonkearns@gmail.com I am presently booked for several workshops in the coming year and will be announcing more . If you are interested in attending a workshop please let me know as well.